After his presentation at People Analytics World 2018, Tim Peffers shares a few thoughts on his experiences and predictions in HR Analytics...

After 8 years of workforce planning, scenario planning and financial analysis in the civil service, Tim moved to B&CE, a small not-for-profit company in Financial Services. This was to have the freedom to be able to test and develop new People Analytics techniques by working in an agile environment and to develop analytics and data practices that can really support all the functions of HR, for the benefit of an entire company.

For how long has your work involved analytics, either directly or in project leadership?

After working in various Data and Business Analysis roles at ITV, BT and in financial services, I moved into a workforce planning and finance role in the civil service for almost 10 years, gradually becoming more involved with People Analytics.

For how long have you worked in the HR domain?

7 years.

How well do you feel People Analytics is progressing?

People Analytics is very exciting but I don't feel any one company (apart from maybe Google) has really got it right. It's an exciting time to be involved as there's currently a lot of early adopters in the industry who aren't afraid to share their work and findings, but I feel the real value and dawn of People Analytics is still ahead of us. Every year the industry is progressing but we're still a long way off the day when People Analytics is embedded into every organisation.

What have been the greatest challenges that you've faced within People Analytics?

The toughest challenge is also the most fun one for me: "How do you measure something that was previously unmeasurable?" Whether it's silo working, collaboration, culture or even lying… I think the most fun challenges are when you're challenged and need to leave the old HR Metric Dashboard, and find new and innovative ways to quantify, cost and forecast things that once were unquantifiable. It's always a great thrill when you can do it as then you can cut right through generations of potential workplace b@llsh!t!

What are your predictions for 2018 and beyond? Where are things heading?

My prediction for 2018 is that the gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' continues to widen. There is a trend in the industry that the large, multinational and often very profitable corporations are pulling all the talent into multiskilled, specialist teams, whilst the small and medium-sized enterprises are left behind.

The increase in highly technical and academic skills in the industry is pushing the work and norms into realms that are too complicated and often unintelligible to non-specialist HR professionals. There seems to be a vacuum in simple, effective and understandable thought leadership, which may make People Analytics a competitive advantage for the few and not the many.

Tim Peffers spoke at PAWorld18 in London on 11-12 April, click below to discover more: